


Liquor Gonna Carry Me Down

by alphvjensen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Gen, M/M, Post-Episode: s12e14 The Raid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 23:50:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10320389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphvjensen/pseuds/alphvjensen
Summary: "Dean hated it. He hated being sent on a mission by those pompous sons of bitches that thought they were better than anyone else with their perfectly manicured hands and fancy tools."





	

**Author's Note:**

> so this is kinda seen as a coda to the last episode but it takes place after the episode actually and this kinda came out of some of my own questions that i have when it comes to what’s currently happening in the plot. you’ll see what i’m talking about.

Dean was an alcoholic. He would try to deny it whenever Sam would bring it up (which wouldn’t be often because he knew where that conversation always ended) but there was no denying the facts. There was almost never a time that Sam didn’t see his brother without some kind of drink in his hand. However he was getting better. His morning coffee wasn’t spiked with whiskey anymore.

But there were times when everything around him would start to be a little bit too much and he needed something to numb the pain. Sometimes it would be failing on a hunt, getting more innocent people killed. Other times he just felt swallowed by everything that was around him, by the lies and the secrets and the weight of the entire goddamn world. Sometimes it would be all those things combined and well, Dean Winchester was only a man and he could only carry so much.

Sam would try to reassure Dean that he was good, that he did all that he could. He shouldn’t blame himself for those people that had died before he managed to get to them but that was just part of his personality. It was something built into him that made him him. He carried everything on his shoulders, never complained and thought that everything was his fault.

It was bad. The case was bad. How they got the case was bad. The outcome was bad. All of it was just… bad. The British Men of Letters had directed them to a case down in Texas, a werewolf they claimed had gone rouge and was turning the local folk in the small town, slowly building up their own pack.

Dean hated it. He hated being sent on a mission by those pompous sons of bitches that thought they were better than anyone else with their perfectly manicured hands and fancy tools.

And he couldn’t help but feel like he was working under Crowley again, hunting down the Alphas, just under a different name. But evil all smelled the same and this felt like it was only going to come back and bite them in the ass.

Freshly turned pups are usually wild but their uncoordinated and they expected that. The Brits said that there had been at least four people turned and in all honesty, Sam and Dean had dealt with bigger packs than that before and so Dean wasn’t sure why there was an uneasy feeling in his stomach as he pulled up in front of the warehouse that they were supposedly made nest in. However, when the six freshly turned pups attacked them, white teeth bared and hungry for human hearts, they were unprepared for it.

Four, they could handle four but six not including the bitch that turned them in the first place… it all felt like a trap. Like the Brits were purposely trying to get them killed.

It was sheer will power alone that they stayed alive. Sheer will power and adrenaline and the overpowering want to show the Brits that sending them down in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t kill a Winchester so easily.

Didn’t keep from Sam getting hurt though and when they got back to the Bunker, Dean broke out his secret stash of whiskey, not even bothering going to his room to drink it.

Accusations screamed through Dean’s head. Sam got hurt and it was all his fault. If only he trusted his gut or didn’t just go off the information that the Brits had given them. If only he took the little bit of extra time to check it out, to make sure that all the information was right and there wouldn’t be any extra surprises. If only… Sam wouldn’t have gotten hurt. The fucking kid that they had taken wouldn’t have gotten  _ killed. _

He felt sick, the alcohol was uneasy in his stomach and he closed his eyes only to be greeted with the image of Sam on his back with that… that  _ thing _ on top of him. It was so close, he was so close to losing the one thing that he cared.

In all honesty, in the hunter’s world, it was nothing more than a scratch. The claws of the werewolf had broken the skin on Sam’s face leaving a gash that only looked worse than it actually was. Then the werewolf got a little too happy with a knife and sunk it into the soft flesh of Sam’s shoulder. Now that, that hurt like a bitch and it required six stitches which Dean administered with a clenched jaw and a furrowed brow. Sam had tried to reassure Dean that he was going to be alright, he was going to survive; granted he would be a little sore but he was okay. The werewolves were dead and they were alive and everything would be alright.

After Dean had patched Sam up, that’s when he went off to look for his bottle.

Sam looked at the form of his brother, sinking into the chair, staring into the endless glass of whiskey that was in his hand and Sam sighed. There would be no talking to him when he was acting like this, when he felt like this, when he believed every lie that he told himself and with a tired shake of his head, Sam turned and went off to the shower room.

This was always the most relaxing part of hunting. The unwinding. The getting clean. The washing away the dirt and grime and blood that coated his skin and got matted in his hair. He washed away the weight of the hunt, watching it as it went down the drain until the water ran clear.

Dean was still sitting in that chair, still holding onto the bottle staring off into nothing as Sam came back up into the library.

He stood in the doorway for a second before deciding to grab the bottle from his loose fingers and screwed on the cap. “May I take this from you?” Sam wasn’t asking.

“That didn’t sound like a question.” Dean replied looking at the bottle that Sam was holding before meeting Sam’s gaze. He was not going to get the bottle back, no matter how much he begged.

Sam put the bottle down on the table before he moved to sit on the edge right next to Dean.

Dean swallowed thickly. “How are you feeling?” I mean… how does your shoulder feel?” He asked, vaguely gesturing to Sam’s shoulder where he had just stitched him up.

“It’s fine.  _ I’m  _ fine.” Sam said, putting as much emphasis in his words as he could. “What about you? Hmm? How are you feeling?”

“Oh, just great?” The sarcasm was heavy in Dean’s voice but other than that there was no other emotion evident. He stood up. “Now, can I have my drink back or…?”

“No.” Sam said, pushing Dean back down in his seat and moved to where he was now standing directly in front of his brother. Dean stared up at Sam, eyes void of anything and Sam leaned forward, grabbing Dean’s face in between his hands, forcing him to look at him. “Dean… I just want a straight answer from you, man. Alright? No lies.”

Dean scoffed but he answered anyway. “I just don’t like seeing you get hurt.”

“Yeah, well, it’s an occupational hazard of the job. We get hurt. I get hurt. Then we lick our wounds clean and we wake up the next day to do the same thing over again. Hunt down monsters and I’ll be fine…” But Dean was shaking his head.

“Hunt down monsters, huh? Or do you mean just go where those Brits tell us to go?” Dean snapped, eyes on fire now.

“Is that what this is about?” Sam asked, being sure to keep his voice soft. “That we took a job from them?”

“Yeah, Sam! It’s about that. I know that I agreed to trust you about them but Sam, they led us into a trap. They nearly got you killed… again. I can’t… Sam, this goes against everything that I believe in and you… I don’t understand man, how you can be so willing to just work with them after what they did to you.”

“I’m not just willing to work with them, Dean. I don’t trust them but they didn’t send us into a trap. They had faulty intel and…”

“Then why didn’t they  _ insist _ on coming with us? They were all the more willing to just send us on our merry way but they didn’t seem to be jumping the gun to join us.”

“Because I told them not to come with us, Dean. I’m not stupid. Having you and them in the same room together for hours on end, that would only cause trouble and I know that.” Sam still hadn’t moved his hands from Dean’s face. “I don’t like them anymore than you do but Dean, this could be the end of monsters. The end of innocent people dying. They killed the Alpha vamp…”

“No, you saved their incompetent asses and killed the Alpha vamp.” Dean corrected. That night when they got back from the Brits compound, Dean made Sam tell the whole story and of course his little brother sold himself short, completely disregarding the fact that it was him that saved the day, not them.

Sam sighed, lips pressed into a hard line before continuing. “Okay but still, I wouldn’t have been able to do that if it weren’t for them, if they hadn’t drawn him out of hiding in the first place. With their technology and our skills, Dean, we could kill all the monsters. We could get rid of them all.” There was this smile on Sam’s face that almost seemed shy, like he couldn’t believe what he was saying despite the fact that it was a truth that was drawing nearer every day with every monster that they killed.

“Yeah and then what? What happens when we kill all the monsters and there’s nothing left to hunt? Are you just going to go back to school, become a lawyer, live that life that you’ve always wanted with no more monsters to drag you back in?”

“The life that I’ve always wanted, Dean, was to live my life with you. I don’t care what we do as long as I’m with you.”

Dean scoffed. Leave it up to his girl of a brother to turn this all sappy. “You don’t mean that.” Dean replied with that smile that he had when he was trying to cover up what he was actually feeling. Give Sam the chance to leave and he would.

A world without monsters was the best chance that he was going to get.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” Sam whispered like the words suddenly held so much weight that he couldn’t actually say them. “You really don’t think that you’re all that I want… that I…” He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “That I love you, Dean.”

That time Dean barked out a laugh. He didn’t believe in love. There was no such thing. Just a stupid emotion that Hallmark thrusts upon everyone to sell movies and have people believe that… that… there was no such thing, alright.

“I’m serious, Dean. I mean, I am the one that puts up with your cocky attitude and the random outburst of anger that you have. I am the one that has to deal with your suicidal tendencies that you call saving others. I am the one that has to listen to you scream the same four songs over and over again. I am the one that has to listen to you complain about the crappy motels we sleep in. I am the one that worries about you night and day. I am the one that stays awake at nights worried that you won’t make it home. Okay? I do that and if that isn’t love, then I don’t know what is.”

There was pain in Dean’s eyes. “I’m scared.” He finally admitted.

And Sam felt the air knocked out of his lungs from Dean’s confession.

“Of what?”

A swallow. A pause. The downcast look and then Dean met his brothers waiting gaze. “Of what  _ I’ll _ be in a world without monsters.”

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts, comments and opinions are always welcomed.


End file.
